After two days browsing and reading through this forum, I finally found my own way of hacking the BIOS of the infamous unmhackable blue Compaq Clipper. I am surprised no one else has found this... and without any hardware modifications!
Here's how to proceed:
Open up the housing (no power applied!) and clear the BIOS by moving the the jumper to the clear position. A couple of seconds is sufficient. Then move it back to the normal position.
Now, leave the casing open, and carefully connect all the cables. The trick is to keep access to the BIOS jumper, while booting...
Now apply power. You should see the compaq logo, and a memory counter. While the counter is on the screen, move the BIOS jumper to the "clear" position and keep it there, until you see the following message:
702-A coprocessor has been detected that is not reported in CMOS
(this probably has no meaning, because we are tricking the system)
As soon as you see that message on the screen, move back the jumper to the normal position. Otherwise, the system cannot proceed.
now, you will notice a block cursor on the right hand side of the screen. Now start pressing the Compaq button a couple of times. Timing is still critical, but I found out it does not matter if you press it too often.
Now you will get the BIOS screen, choose the right language, and you're in!
In the BIOS I enabled the secondary IDE controller (Compact Flash) and now I can boot Linux from my Compact Flash card.
The good thing about it is, that I can still revert back to the original BeIA system, as that is still in the onboard flash.
Erik. | |
